Understand all that, I do. What I'm saying though is even though AG could be better HPS in some context, I'm not likely to take it. I've already got 3 CDs for healing intensive moments, I don't see any reason to try squeeze another one into my bars/key binds. Could AG produce a huge amount of HPS, sure. Would I use it to it's full potential, unlikely.

Next question is, how useful will it even be in a real situation? My 3 CD abilities (HTT, SLT and Ascendance) + what ever the rest of the raid brings, there will be a metric ton of damage reduction and/or healing cooldowns available. Is AG even needed when you consider it from that point of view

It depends on the fights. For example, take Megaera with our current toolkit. With how fast the heads die now (I think this may not have been the case at ~ilvl 520 progression), I can use HTT, SLT and Ascendance on the first 3 rampages. For the 4th rampage, I will not have a cooldown up. Having AG available in that situation on a 2 minute cooldown would make a huge difference, and the 2 minute CD would even allow you to combine it with another CD on one of the early rampages.

On other fights, you want more cooldown power and ability to stack cooldowns together. AG synergizes very well with Ascendance, because both are generally maximized by having Healing Rain down before using them and then spamming Healing Surge (With the CH buffs, it will probably be spamming CH instead next patch). Using both of them at once lets you burst 5 million+ healing, which is like having a second Tranq type raid cooldown.

I really don't think that not wanting to have another keybind is a legitimate argument for always taking RS, even when fight mechanics clearly favor AG. No offense, but that is just laziness and bad play.

That aside though, even in an optimum situation, how useful is AG really, with all the damage reduction cooldowns, being able to pump out 5 million + healing is great and all, but it's still just a waste if there is only 1 million damage to heal
I've always agreed with you to an extent tibbee, but honestly you keep making the same mistake over and over again. You always seem to over look as a raider you are part of a team, and in that team you are part of the healer team, just one piece of the puzzle. Even in a 10man, there are normally 3 or 4 other raid wide cooldowns, not to mention personal damage reductions and healing ablities. AG is just another to add to the list, and probably not really needed.

That aside though, even in an optimum situation, how useful is AG really, with all the damage reduction cooldowns, being able to pump out 5 million + healing is great and all, but it's still just a waste if there is only 1 million damage to heal
I've always agreed with you to an extent tibbee, but honestly you keep making the same mistake over and over again. You always seem to over look as a raider you are part of a team, and in that team you are part of the healer team, just one piece of the puzzle. Even in a 10man, there are normally 3 or 4 other raid wide cooldowns, not to mention personal damage reductions and healing ablities. AG is just another to add to the list, and probably not really needed.

It's something that you just have to take, and analyze how well AG performs on specific fights, how much healing you get from it, and how much it overheals. It's pretty easy to determine how much output Rushing Streams would give you, by just multiplying the healing done by HST when it isn't specced by 2.6. This is pretty accurate, because HST normally has reliably low overheal.

If the numbers are relatively close, or AG is ahead at all, I would personally be inclined to go with AG, because I think the value of on demand burst cooldown healing is greater than the value of passive ticking healing in terms of the impact it has on your success on any given pull.

The argument that you use in terms of having enough raid wide burst cooldowns can also be applied to RS - is there really a shortage of passive, ticking AOE smart heals in the current raid environment - especially in 25 mans? How much does adding more really do for your raid other than increasing overall raid overheal?

It's something that you just have to take, and analyze how well AG performs on specific fights, how much healing you get from it, and how much it overheals. It's pretty easy to determine how much output Rushing Streams would give you, by just multiplying the healing done by HST when it isn't specced by 2.6. This is pretty accurate, because HST normally has reliably low overheal.

If the numbers are relatively close, or AG is ahead at all, I would personally be inclined to go with AG, because I think the value of on demand burst cooldown healing is greater than the value of passive ticking healing in terms of the impact it has on your success on any given pull.

The argument that you use in terms of having enough raid wide burst cooldowns can also be applied to RS - is there really a shortage of passive, ticking AOE smart heals in the current raid environment - especially in 25 mans? How much does adding more really do for your raid other than increasing overall raid overheal?

Point taken, makes sense. In all honesty though, I'm probably still more inclined to take RS over AG for most situations. Lazy, maybe. But looks like the lvl75 talents are now a viable choice so I guess the sum of it is the designers have done what was asked

The argument that you use in terms of having enough raid wide burst cooldowns can also be applied to RS - is there really a shortage of passive, ticking AOE smart heals in the current raid environment - especially in 25 mans? How much does adding more really do for your raid other than increasing overall raid overheal?

This is exactly the point we ware looking for.
You do not need any passive smart heal in 25man raidencounter at the moment (anywhere in ToT).

LeiShen HC was an excellent example.
There is no encounter, not even Dark Animus where double the amount of HST could have safed the kill. AG would have safed it, if you could top all of your mates right before an interrupting jolt.

There is so much passive smart heal coming from the Priests, Monks (Brewmaster and Mistweaver), Paladins (Protection and Holy) and some other guys.
As a Shaman you could just wait for any burst dmg while looking at the ridiculous amount of absorbs on any target. Why trying to push your heal with HST where it is not needed? You do not have to passively heal the raid. This is simply not your job as a shaman in a 25man raid.
Do some stupidly low damage if there is nothing but to cast HW to do.

This low damage is an issue...not our HPS.
We have our strengths...way more than the others.

i know the change is intended to help resto, but its an interesting option for ele and enhance as well on fights with spread and no spikes (something akin to Garajal). If glyph works thats a nice amount of blanket 10% reduce ele damage as well.

i know the change is intended to help resto, but its an interesting option for ele and enhance as well on fights with spread and no spikes (something akin to Garajal). If glyph works thats a nice amount of blanket 10% reduce ele damage as well.

I can't see it ever being attractive for Ele/Enhance outside of situations where the HST glyph is absolutely critical to the success of the fight. For one thing, HST only heals for ~18k as Ele (and probably less as Enhance), compared to ~40k as Resto. Using HST on every CD as Ele is still going to be less than half of the healing you would get from a single AG use. For another, 1 GCD every 30 seconds is a huge DPS loss, especially when AG is off the GCD and especially when you're taking a talent that is vastly inferior even without the GCD loss taken into account. I just can't see how it's at all a reasonable option for DPS.

I can't see it ever being attractive for Ele/Enhance outside of situations where the HST glyph is absolutely critical to the success of the fight. For one thing, HST only heals for ~18k as Ele (and probably less as Enhance), compared to ~40k as Resto. Using HST on every CD as Ele is still going to be less than half of the healing you would get from a single AG use. For another, 1 GCD every 30 seconds is a huge DPS loss, especially when AG is off the GCD and especially when you're taking a talent that is vastly inferior even without the GCD loss taken into account. I just can't see how it's at all a reasonable option for DPS.

it comes down to what the raid needs. Ag is a great burst of healing for 10 seconds but the HST can provide a better stream (yuk yuK) of healing to the group. As ele mine heals normal 25-26 and crits for 50 and up so i dont know where your numbers are coming from. plus as i stated the glyph will spread a nice 10% blanket damaged reduc. and honestly one GCD is not going to make or break your dps

im not saying its going to be better than ag or conduc (which seems right now to actually be the best of three if there is no limit to how many seconds you can add) but i dont see it as irrelevant. like all good talent tiers i think we will bounce to it for certain situations.

I think I'm missing something. I thought AG said that 60% of "direct healing" was transferred. Does that apply to Healing Rain? Or is this another thing that was changed in the PTR that completely went over my head?

I thought the reason you got the most out of AG with HS instead of CH was because of that "direct" wording, and CH jumps didn't count. I would have figured if a CH jump didn't count, a HR tick certainly didn't, either.

I've tried AG for Megaera, and could never get very good output from it. Granted, this was 25 Normal, not Heroic, but I always felt HTT was doing more for my raid and whenever I looked over WoL, HTT was doing more pure healing as well. So I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, I was just doing a basic precasting UE buffed HR, then popping AG and spamming HS.

Are they going to do anything with Totemic Restoration, like they said they were planning on doing? Lord knows we need the whole totem tier remodeled, and they not just hinted at, but said that's what their plans were in fixing Resto's AoE issues. Or is RS and 2 seconds glyph of CH the bandaid, instead? I would still LOVE to see Talent tier 3 changed the hell up.

Rule of Thumb: If the healer's HPS is higher than your DPS, you're doing it wrong.

I think I'm missing something. I thought AG said that 60% of "direct healing" was transferred. Does that apply to Healing Rain? Or is this another thing that was changed in the PTR that completely went over my head?

It was a stealth change in the 5.3 patch (HR and CH both fully work). Stealth because it wasn't in the patch notes. Also because using AG over HTT could only really give you a benefit a few early ToT heroic fights. But AG requires more skill to use. So nobody talked about it.

You might have seen worse results with if you were overhealing vs overkill. If the raid is being topped off between damage events when you use AG, then you'll see less effective healing. This is actually the biggest potential detractor for AG imo (in the RST vs AG debate).

Really, even in 5.3 spamming Healing Surge is only a slight HPS increase for AG over chain heal and is largely not worth it unless someone can receive a fully effective HS crit. Better to spam chain heal and reactively use HS. Your goal isn't to maximize your AG healing done, it's to maximize your healing done. HS also is a mana hog which will lower your HPS in the long run in mana-limited fights.

It was a stealth change in the 5.3 patch (HR and CH both fully work). Stealth because it wasn't in the patch notes. Also because using AG over HTT could only really give you a benefit a few early ToT heroic fights. But AG requires more skill to use. So nobody talked about it.

You might have seen worse results with if you were overhealing vs overkill. If the raid is being topped off between damage events when you use AG, then you'll see less effective healing. This is actually the biggest potential detractor for AG imo (in the RST vs AG debate).

Really, even in 5.3 spamming Healing Surge is only a slight HPS increase for AG over chain heal and is largely not worth it unless someone can receive a fully effective HS crit. Better to spam chain heal and reactively use HS. Your goal isn't to maximize your AG healing done, it's to maximize your healing done. HS also is a mana hog which will lower your HPS in the long run in mana-limited fights.

The CH buff is going to make CH spam (with Healing Rain down) clearly the most effective way to use both AG and Ascendance. In theory, I could see value in trying to use Ascendance and AG at the same time as much as possible (obviously AG will get used more because of the lower CD), because both basically require the same spell selection to maximize, and using both together probably will give output at the level of a major 25 man raid cooldown.

I think I'm missing something. I thought AG said that 60% of "direct healing" was transferred. Does that apply to Healing Rain? Or is this another thing that was changed in the PTR that completely went over my head?

I thought the reason you got the most out of AG with HS instead of CH was because of that "direct" wording, and CH jumps didn't count. I would have figured if a CH jump didn't count, a HR tick certainly didn't, either.

I've tried AG for Megaera, and could never get very good output from it. Granted, this was 25 Normal, not Heroic, but I always felt HTT was doing more for my raid and whenever I looked over WoL, HTT was doing more pure healing as well. So I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, I was just doing a basic precasting UE buffed HR, then popping AG and spamming HS.

Yeah, i can not imagine what you are doing wrong without any logs analysis.
These are my AGs at Megaera and Twins.

Originally Posted by Pitkanen

It was a stealth change in the 5.3 patch (HR and CH both fully work). Stealth because it wasn't in the patch notes. Also because using AG over HTT could only really give you a benefit a few early ToT heroic fights. But AG requires more skill to use. So nobody talked about it.

You might have seen worse results with if you were overhealing vs overkill. If the raid is being topped off between damage events when you use AG, then you'll see less effective healing. This is actually the biggest potential detractor for AG imo (in the RST vs AG debate).

Really, even in 5.3 spamming Healing Surge is only a slight HPS increase for AG over chain heal and is largely not worth it unless someone can receive a fully effective HS crit. Better to spam chain heal and reactively use HS. Your goal isn't to maximize your AG healing done, it's to maximize your healing done. HS also is a mana hog which will lower your HPS in the long run in mana-limited fights.

Do not forget the higher amount of Healing Surge copied overheal.
Your 200k ChainHeal will be copied to 12 smaller AG heals as of the 4 CH jumps. so you will heal 12 players for approx. 30k (higher amounts of the first CH jump, way lower from the last one (only until 5.4 hits))
HS will critically hit a target for 250k so you will heal 3 players for 150k and this higher amounts have a higher overheal potential.

I can't see it ever being attractive for Ele/Enhance outside of situations where the HST glyph is absolutely critical to the success of the fight. For one thing, HST only heals for ~18k as Ele (and probably less as Enhance), compared to ~40k as Resto. Using HST on every CD as Ele is still going to be less than half of the healing you would get from a single AG use. For another, 1 GCD every 30 seconds is a huge DPS loss, especially when AG is off the GCD and especially when you're taking a talent that is vastly inferior even without the GCD loss taken into account. I just can't see how it's at all a reasonable option for DPS.

HST as enhancement according to my latest log ticks for 17k (critted for 35) on average at an illvl of 532. The nice thing is that it doesn't cost any dps as enhancement isn't GCD capped so you can easily fill in your empty GCDs with a totem.

Sure it's not as nice as AG+HR for burst but I can see it being used on certain fights.

It's the internet. You never know if people are either sarcastic or just bad.

Yeah, i can not imagine what you are doing wrong without any logs analysis.
These are my AGs at Megaera and Twins.

Do not forget the higher amount of Healing Surge copied overheal.
Your 200k ChainHeal will be copied to 12 smaller AG heals as of the 4 CH jumps. so you will heal 12 players for approx. 30k (higher amounts of the first CH jump, way lower from the last one (only until 5.4 hits))
HS will critically hit a target for 250k so you will heal 3 players for 150k and this higher amounts have a higher overheal potential.

Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't find any of my AG logs. I haven't used AG in a while, since I wasn't able to do with it what I wanted. We've also been extending our raid ID and skipping bosses lately to go for the Lei-Shen kill on 25 man, so I haven't actually killed Megaera in a while. On top of that, ever since 5.3 came out, I've just felt... I dunno, depressed(?) playing Resto and have been switching to Ele as much as possible. I still play Resto when the guild needs me to heal, and for progression fights, since it's easier to direct the healers when I know what they're doing. But anything we have on farm, I've been asking to not heal for, because it's such a disappointing spec right now.

Originally Posted by Pitkanen

It was a stealth change in the 5.3 patch (HR and CH both fully work). Stealth because it wasn't in the patch notes. Also because using AG over HTT could only really give you a benefit a few early ToT heroic fights. But AG requires more skill to use. So nobody talked about it.

You might have seen worse results with if you were overhealing vs overkill. If the raid is being topped off between damage events when you use AG, then you'll see less effective healing. This is actually the biggest potential detractor for AG imo (in the RST vs AG debate).

Really, even in 5.3 spamming Healing Surge is only a slight HPS increase for AG over chain heal and is largely not worth it unless someone can receive a fully effective HS crit. Better to spam chain heal and reactively use HS. Your goal isn't to maximize your AG healing done, it's to maximize your healing done. HS also is a mana hog which will lower your HPS in the long run in mana-limited fights.

Thanks for this info, if I have an opportunity, I'll revisit AG again and see if I can't do a bit better with this new information.

HST as enhancement according to my latest log ticks for 17k (critted for 35) on average at an illvl of 532. The nice thing is that it doesn't cost any dps as enhancement isn't GCD capped so you can easily fill in your empty GCDs with a totem.

Sure it's not as nice as AG+HR for burst but I can see it being used on certain fights.

The problem is you can pack more healing into a single AG use than RS will do over the course of an entire fight. Even if the glyph was useful on a given fight (raid damage is fire/frost/nature), RS would still be a questionable choice, because you're sacrificing so much healing, and the healing you're sacrificing is in a much more useful form (meaningful burst heals vs. spread out, weak, inconsequential heals)

, I could see value in trying to use Ascendance and AG at the same time as much as possible (obviously AG will get used more because of the lower CD), because both basically require the same spell selection to maximize, and using both together probably will give output at the level of a major 25 man raid cooldown.

You cant use Ascendance and AG at the same time. Was the idiot way to fix the abuse at Tsulong Heroic .

You cant use Ascendance and AG at the same time. Was the idiot way to fix the abuse at Tsulong Heroic .

Yes, you can. I haven't tried it as Resto recently, but you most definitely can use Ascendance and AG at the same time as Ele (and it is when you would typically want to use it as Ele if you were trying to maximize healing anyway). They fixed the Tsulong thing by adjusting some of the healing split mechanics associated with AG (I forget exactly how).

Yes, you can. I haven't tried it as Resto recently, but you most definitely can use Ascendance and AG at the same time as Ele (and it is when you would typically want to use it as Ele if you were trying to maximize healing anyway). They fixed the Tsulong thing by adjusting some of the healing split mechanics associated with AG (I forget exactly how).